


hook, line, and sinker

by Mythopoeia



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [237]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Because this is Finwe’s family they are never without, Brothers, Courtship, Estrangement, F/M, Finarfin was and is a mischievous baby brother, Fingolfin was and is a Dear, Fishing, Fluff, Gen, Humor, Innuendo, Mild Angst, Mother-Son Relationship, Sort Of, Teen Finwions, The Finarfin Elopement Scandal, Young Love, a cameo from baby finrod, anyway the upshot is Finrod’s babyhood nickname was little minnow, indis and fingolfin deserved more time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:27:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24247252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mythopoeia/pseuds/Mythopoeia
Summary: “Honestly, I would have thought you to be a little more skilled at this,” Fingolfin remarked as his brother drew in yet another broken line. “Considering how much practice you have had these last two weeks.”“Yes, well,” Finarfin muttered, scrubbing his dripping hands against his breeches, “Night fishing isnotgenerally sodifficult.”“Is it not?” Fingolfin frowned. “Is it because Earwen is not here?”
Relationships: Eärwen/Finarfin | Arafinwë
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [237]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	hook, line, and sinker

“Honestly, I would have thought you to be a little more skilled at this,” Fingolfin remarked as his brother drew in yet another broken line. “Considering how much practice you have had these last two weeks.”

“Yes, well,” Finarfin muttered, tossing his fishing rod down with an English curse and scrubbing his dripping hands against his breeches, “Night fishing is _not_ generally so _difficult._ ”

“Is it not?” Fingolfin frowned at his own line, where it still hung dull and motionless in the black water. He could only tell where it was by the vaguest amber ripples of the river flow cutting around it in the low lantern-light. “I am sorry—is it because I am here, Finarfin? Perhaps the creatures are more easily frightened off when Earwen isn’t here to show us how it is done.”

“Earwen helps, certainly,” Finarfin admitted, his rare frustration subsiding with a sudden laugh as he stooped to recollect the rod. “Oh, damn—now I’ve dropped the new hook, too. Fingolfin, don’t laugh at me. It shall be bad enough having to tell Earwen in the morning what a disaster this has been without you jeering at me now.”

“I never jeer,” Fingolfin smiled placidly, as his younger brother crouched down to begin feeling tentatively through the grass. 

“True enough, compared to some. Raise the lantern towards me, would you?”

“And frighten away all the fish?” Fingolfin whispered askance, as he lifted the lantern and jiggled it a little to open the aperture wider. Finarfin’s hair caught the yellow light brightly. 

“It’s either that or I find this fishhook by stabbing it into my—aha!”

Finarfin straightened up with a grin. The lost hook twinkled star-like between his muddy fingers.

“Well,” Fingolfin said, settling the lantern back into the mud at his own feet, “At least we can tell Earwen we caught _something_ , anyway.”

*

Finwe had shut himself in his study for days, in a rare display of Feanor-like pique. Fingolfin, wretched, weathered this unusual storm as he had all those more regular ones: by hovering ineffectually, retreating to his own rooms to indulge in private misery, and seeking out his mother’s company, in that order.

Indis now accepted the teacup he offered her with a smile, setting aside her lacemaking. She had begun her new project the day after Finarfin’s letter had arrived to break the news of his elopement, and the night after Fingolfin had overheard his parents raise voices against each other for the first time in his memory, their voices clear even through their closed bedroom door. As a boy, Fingolfin had marveled at the pretty lace his mother’s fingers made, as cleverly as a spider might weave silk, but much finer, the patterns reminding him of the flower boxes at the windows, and the web-like shape of sunlight through the trees in the Park.

It had been Feanor, who had said Indis was like a spider at work. He had not meant it kindly.

“Fingolfin.” 

Fingolfin broke from thought to the realization that his mother was watching him closely, with a tenderness in her look that reminded him, dreadfully, of Finarfin. 

He had spent enough years stricken with loneliness for a brother. He did not think he could bear it much longer, to have Finarfin lost to him, too.

“I am blessed with a dutiful son,” Indis remarked, setting her cup back upon its saucer. “And yet I am grieved, to see him so sad. Your smile belongs here, my darling,”—tapping him lightly upon the cheek where he knew her own dimples sometimes showed— “and not here.”

Her thumb stroked lightly the unhappy furrow between his brows. 

Fingolfin tried to relax, spreading his hands upon his knees.

“I don’t mean to worry you,” he said. “It is only that I—I am sorry, that I did not stop it. I _should_ have stopped it.”

“Oh, nonsense.” His mother took one of his hands comfortingly, and shook her head. “I know my boys, and I know that even if you had known his plan, there is nothing you could have said to persuade Finarfin once his mind was made up. Your father does not blame you either, if that is what worries you. He will not be angry much longer, either; he misses your brother too much.”

“I blame myself,” Fingolfin admitted, with an unhappy shrug of his shoulders. “I was—I was his chaperone, of a sort. I should have noticed what was in the wind. And yet there was no indication, nothing! He was happy, of course; but we all of us were. I liked Earwen very much; I can see, looking at it now, how she might have attracted him, for they have the same general manner. You know how Finarfin is, mother.”

Indis smiled bravely, and returned to her tea. 

For the hundredth time, Fingolfin re-examined the country holiday he had taken with his wayward brother, hunting for clues, but there had been nothing untoward about Finarfin and Earwen’s interactions at the three dances they attended. Nor had there been any impropriety under her father’s roof, that Fingolfin could recall, or on their excursions into town. His brother had danced with Earwen multiple times, yes; but so had Fingolfin, there being a scarcity of ladies at the hall. Earwen was friendly, cheerful, and had nothing of the usual high society reserve, but she had not so much as held Finarfin’s hand in Fingolfin’s sight, during their weeks in her father’s house. Indeed, the only occupations which held her interest had been conversation, harp-playing, and fishing. Everyone fished, in Alqualonde; it was a large aspect of what gave Ulmo’s Bridge its charming character. Fingolfin himself had taken up the hobby, during his time there, and Finarfin had been a specially eager student of night fishing, which he had gone out to learn from Earwen nearly every evening of their stay.

Earwen had been a particular expert in the art, evidently; Fingolfin himself had been so intrigued by how taken Finarfin seemed with the practice that she had at last insisted that Finarfin take him down to the river to demonstrate.

“Nonsense,” she had said to his protests, raising a calm eyebrow at Finarfin though her eyes twinkled. “Your brother knows how much you have been liking it, Finarfin; go and enjoy yourself without me for once, lest he begin to feel left out! Fingolfin, tell me all about it in the morning; I am sure he shall be very impressive, after so much practice.”

They had caught nothing that night—Finarfin had bungled every line nearly as badly as Fingolfin did himself—Finarfin had seemed barely familiar with the river at all—Fingolfin had generously thought it was only nerves—Earwen had been very merry at their report around the breakfast table next morning, and had suggested that perhaps Fingolfin might be a better night fishing partner than his brother after all, what did Finarfin think about that—

“Oh, dear God,” Fingolfin said aloud to the parlor, forgetting his mother was still in the room with him. 

*

“Of course that is what night fishing meant,” a pregnant Earwen said during a visit some months later, their family at last reconciled again. She regarded Fingolfin with perfect, guileless gravity, while behind her chair Finarfin was still unable to breathe for laughing. “What did you _think_ we were doing every night?”

*

The affair was humorous, by then, even to Fingolfin, because it had all ended well: Finwe was again on speaking terms with his youngest son, and delighted by the promise of a new grandchild, and Earwen had been very touched by Indis’ gift of a lace coverlet, at their first meeting. Finarfin never exactly offered an apology, but Fingolfin never demanded one from him. He was too glad to have things back the way they were, and anyway he had not been lying when he said he thought Finarfin and Earwen made a good match. 

(Feanor had apparently come calling on the new couple a handful of times during the estrangement, and had even brought a silver bridal bowl as a gift. Fingolfin tried not to react, when Finarfin told him that—he himself had not seen Feanor in five months.)

*

Finarfin, unrepentant, took wicked pleasure in working night fishing into conversation at their father’s house, the next time he came to dinner when Fingolfin was home. 

Fingolfin, patient, took his revenge by gifting his brother with an expensive silver vase decorated with fishes, when he visited to see his new baby nephew for the first time. 

“Congratulations,” he told Finarfin in his kindliest tone, in front of a beaming Olwe, “on finally making a catch.”

There was no more talk of night fishing after that!

(If only all truces were made so easily.)


End file.
